Yahoo reported a 1 percent sales increase on Tuesday, a marked shift after multiple quarters of decline, though results in its critical ad business were mixed.

The company also said its mobile revenue had become significant enough to report for the first time, passing $200 million. That was a minor victory for CEO Marissa Mayer, who's been trying hard to get more traction for Yahoo on smartphones and tablets.

"We had a good, solid third quarter," Mayer said in the company's announcement Tuesday.

Net income was $6.77 billion, or $6.70 a share, driven largely by an after-tax profit of $6.3 billion from the sale of Yahoo's stake in e-commerce giant Alibaba in the Chinese company's IPO last month.

Much of the success in mobile came from so-called native ads, which are designed to look like the editorial content that appears around them.

"We are moving from a company that makes web pages and money through banner ads to a company that makes mobile apps and monetizes them through native ads," Mayer said in a conference call to discuss the results.

Since she took over as CEO in 2012, the company has made numerous mobile acquisitions and revamped mobile offerings in the areas of news, email, weather, and photos with Flickr.